Kim Jaeger, who married into the Cavanagh family, packed boxes. The company has been family-owned for four generations.

From a purely economic point of view, it is something that is almost just as rare: a seemingly recession-proof business.

With the exception of a decline during recent Catholic Church priest scandals, the Cavanagh Company’s business of making communion bread has been growing steadily for the last 65 years.

The bread is used as a sacramental offering that, for Catholics and some other Christians, represents the breaking of the bread at the Last Supper and the body of Christ.

The family-owned company makes about 80 percent of the communion bread used by the Catholic, Episcopal, Lutheran and Southern Baptist churches in the United States. It has a similar market share in Australia, Canada and Britain, and is now looking to expand to West Africa.

“We feel as though we’re a bakery, and all we’re making is bread,” said Andy Cavanagh, the company’s general manager, and part of the fourth generation of Cavanaghs to work here. “It’s not that we don’t have respect for what happens to it, but that transformation is out of our hands and takes place in a church. The best thing we can do is make sure the bread is perfect in every way possible.”

Some customers say the Cavanaghs have such a big market share because their product is about as close to perfect as earthly possible.

“It doesn’t crumb, and I don’t like fragments of our Lord scattering all over the floor,” said the Rev. Bob Dietel, an Episcopal priest.

Mr. Dietel uses Cavanagh altar bread at his parish, St. Aidan’s, in Camano Island, Wash. He likes that the large wafer, which he holds up and breaks during Mass, cracks cleanly.

A few years ago, the congregation switched to the wheat wafer the Cavanaghs make from the white.

“There’s a nice clean bread flavor, as opposed to the paste flavor you have with some other breads,” Mr. Dietel said.

His congregation buys about 6,000 wafers a year from a Seattle religious goods store. Traditionally, nuns, priests or members of a congregation baked altar bread. (In the Catholic tradition it is unleavened and contains only flour and water; other denominations, including Southern Baptists, allow the use of additional ingredients.)

In 1943, Andy’s great-grandfather, John Cavanagh Sr., an inventor, and grandfather, John Jr., were asked to help local Catholic nuns renovate their antiquated baking equipment. The men created new ovens and mixers for the nuns; then three years later, John Jr. and his brother Paul started making bread themselves.

They distributed all of it to Catholic churches and monasteries.

The Cavanaghs are Catholic and John Sr. let his sons run the business so he could concentrate on his first love, liturgical art. Crosses and paintings are showcased in a room in the Rhode Island offices.

For about 20 years, the Cavanagh bread was small, white and nearly transparent, intended to melt on the tongue. After the changes initiated in the church at the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, Catholic churches wanted the wafers to be thicker and chewable, like real bread.

The Cavanaghs started producing the wafers of today — usually whole wheat and sealed on the outside to prevent crumbs.

In 1970, Paul’s sons Brian and Peter joined the business and started expanding the company’s reach beyond New England and the Catholic Church, where fewer and fewer nuns were making bread.

The company will not disclose sales numbers, but says it makes about 850 million wafers each year, and that each wafer sells for less than a penny. Most of the company’s bread is sold wholesale to religious supply stores and Southern Baptist bookstores. In the Catholic Church the company sells to monasteries; the nuns then sell the bread to churches.

“It’s a source of income for us, but at the same time it’s a service to the parishes in the diocese,” said Sister Marilyn McGillan of the Sisters of the Precious Blood in Watertown, N.Y. Her monastery sells to about 100 churches in the Catholic Diocese of Ogdensburg, N.Y. “We’re like a clearinghouse for altar breads for our dioceses.”

There are plenty of varieties. The company sells both white and wheat flour wafers, in sizes ranging from one and one-eighth inches wide to nine inches wide. Some are double-thick, and all except the large ones can be embossed with designs including a cross or a lamb.

‘They’re the classic symbols of Christianity,” Andy Cavanagh said.

Brian and Peter Cavanagh still run the company, and expect Andy, 30, Peter’s son; and his two brothers, Dan, 31 and Luke, 28, to buy them out one day.

The family members pride themselves on having never had an argument over business. They eat lunch together daily, and business talk almost always turns into discussions about New England sports teams.

“When you emphasize family, the business falls into place,” Brian said.

Each brother has his own niche. Andy deals with the finances, Luke the Web site and Dan the machines.

Dan Cavanagh feels most at home in the large baking area.

In huge tubs, about 90 pounds of cake flour is mixed with about 13 gallons of water. The batter is then sent through a tube, where it is piped onto a large metal plate. Another plate clamps on top, and it goes through the oven. Each plate is like a “very large, 500-pound waffle iron,” Dan Cavanagh said.

After coming out of the oven, the wafers spend about 15 minutes in what amounts to a humidifier, so they do not become brittle. When sufficiently moist they roll down a tube and into a spinning cylinder that resembles the ones in bingo halls.

The wafers are then shot to a machine that either puts them in sleeves of 100 or counts them for bags of 250. Then they are boxed.

The bread for Southern Baptist churches is baked on the other side of the room. The mixing process is similar, except the dough contains oil. Since the bread rises, it is baked in a large rotating oven and comes out as small squares.

The wafers and bread are made in both white and whole wheat, but most congregations prefer the whole wheat variety because it has more flavor, the Cavanaghs said.

Business dropped about 10 percent after the clergy sexual abuse scandal that rocked the Catholic Church in 2002, according to the Cavanaghs. But it has picked up recently — perhaps because of the growing worldly concerns that come with a bad economy.

The company now sells church supplies including altars and pews in England and Australia, and is keeping an eye on the growing Catholic communities in Africa and South America.

But no matter where they do business, they say, the company will remain in Rhode Island, and in the family.

“It’s so gratifying to have it be a successful family business,” Brian Cavanagh said.

2008年12月14日 星期日

Sweet and Sour Cabbage With Tofu and Grains

By MARTHA ROSE SHULMAN

Published: December 12, 2008

You can use regular green cabbage for this slightly spicy, sweet-and-sour stir-fry, or you can use Napa Cabbage. I like to serve the dish with bulgur, but you could also serve it with rice, noodles or any other grain.

Recipes for Health

This series offers recipes with an eye towards empowering you to cook healthy meals every day. Produce, seasonal and locally grown when possible, and a well-stocked pantry are the linchpins of a good diet, and accordingly, each week’s recipes will revolve around a particular type of produce or a pantry item. This is food that is vibrant and light, full of nutrients but by no means ascetic, fun to cook and a pleasure to eat.

1. Blot the tofu dry with paper towels. Heat 1 tablespoon of the oil in a large nonstick skillet or a wok over medium-high heat and when it is rippling, add the tofu. Cook, tossing in the pan or turning over with tongs, for 2 to 3 minutes, until lightly colored. Add 1 tablespoon soy sauce, toss together for about 30 seconds, and remove from the heat. Set aside in a bowl.

2. Heat the remaining oil in the pan over medium-high heat and add the onion. Stir-fry for about 3 minutes, until crisp-tender, and add the white part of the scallions, the garlic, and ginger. Stir together for about 30 seconds, until fragrant but not colored. Add the cayenne, stir in the cabbage and stir-fry until the cabbage begins to wilt, about 2 minutes. Stir in the vinegar, and sugar and continue to cook, stirring, until the cabbage is crisp-tender, 3 to 5 minutes.

3. Return the tofu to the pan and stir together. Add more soy sauce to taste and stir together. Sprinkle on the scallion greens and sesame seeds and remove from the heat. Serve over grains or noodles.

Yield: Serves 4 generously

Advance preparation: This is a last minute dish, but you can cook the grains several hours ahead and reheat, and you can have everything prepped and ready to go.

2008年12月4日 星期四

Whetting desires for winter one-pot meals

2008/12/2

On my recent business trip to Fukuoka, the lady manager of a local restaurant told me, "When you prepare hakusai napa cabbage for nabe stew, you should cut the leaves lengthwise." Indeed, if the leaves are cut vertically into long strips, the white fleshy part remains crisp and flavorful. I readily agreed this was the way to savor this vegetable at its seasonal best.

At home, I am feared by my family as the bossy nabe chef. But to confess, I never knew I was chopping the cabbage the wrong way--that is, horizontally. In my own defense, however, it's not such a terrible thing to let the cabbage cook through and flavor the broth, which will be used to make zosui (rice porridge) at the end of the meal. Actually, some people prefer their cabbage thoroughly cooked and soggy, while others are horrified by the very thought. To each his own, and ultimately it's the chef's call.

Around this season, the morning frost adds sweetness to napa cabbages. The other day, I visited Yachiyo, Ibaraki Prefecture, one of the foremost hakusai farming regions in the country. Trainee farmers from China, the home of this leafy delicacy, were busy harvesting the vegetable. Wielding special blades, they sheared the heads off, each big enough to be an armful, and lined them up in two layers.

After the outer leaves are peeled off, the snowy white heads were exposed, looking like they had just been washed clean. Maybe it was their pure whiteness or perhaps their "buxom" roundness, that made me think they looked almost erotic. Though these were being boxed in the fields, I recalled a haiku by Kenkichi Kusumoto: "Washed clean/ The hakusai bask in the sun/ Like a row of white buttocks."

A nabe dinner, consisting of common ingredients and stewed on a portable tabletop stove, is just right for these economically lean times.

According to Dentsu Communication Institute, which published a list of popular consumer items last week, uchi-gomori (staying at home) is the buzzword that defines people's interest in saving money and enjoying quality time at home.

It's already December. In this day and age, the future is uncertain, no matter how you look at it. Perhaps this is the time to focus on today and enjoy it to the max. And I always welcome a nabe dinner at home, with its delicious aromas of seafood, vegetables and other items tickling the nose, and everyone smiling happily as steam rises from bubbling broth.

2008年11月18日 星期二

Versatile Potatoes of the Sweet Variety

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

By MARTHA ROSE SHULMAN

Published: November 17, 2008

Most of us begin thinking about sweet potatoes around Thanksgiving and stop buying them soon afterwards. But this nutritious vegetable is quite versatile and makes a great puree, soup or soufflé; “croutons” made with it are wonderful in salads, providing a lovely contrast to savory lettuces, salty cheeses and pungent dressings. When baked ahead of time and kept in the refrigerator, sweet potatoes become sweeter by the day and make a great lunch, hot or cold, and a great snack for children.

Recipes for Health

This series offers recipes with an eye towards empowering you to cook healthy meals every day. Produce, seasonal and locally grown when possible, and a well-stocked pantry are the linchpins of a good diet, and accordingly, each week’s recipes will revolve around a particular type of produce or a pantry item. This is food that is vibrant and light, full of nutrients but by no means ascetic, fun to cook and a pleasure to eat.

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Of the deep orange sweet potatoes, my favorites are garnets, which have dark red skin with orange flesh, and jewels, with orange skin with deep orange flesh. Both of these types have moist, sweet flesh that oozes syrup as they bake. Yet sweet as they are, sweet potatoes are a relatively low-calorie food, with approximately 105 calories in a 3 1/2 ounce serving. They’re high in fiber and an excellent source of vitamin A in the form of beta-carotene. They’re also high in vitamin C and manganese, and a good source of copper, vitamin B6, potassium, and iron.

Baked Sweet Potatoes

These make a great lunch or snack. Bake some up and cut thick slices to go with cottage cheese, goat cheese, or feta for a quick lunch. Don’t try to save time and use a microwave for this recipe: the sweet potatoes won’t be nearly as sweet. They need time in the hot oven for their enzymes to convert starch into maltose, which is the sugar that makes sweet potatoes sweet.

4 medium sweet potatoes

1. Preheat the oven to 425ºF. Scrub sweet potatoes and pierce in several places with a sharp knife. Line a baking sheet with foil and place the potatoes on top. Bake for 45 minutes to an hour, depending on the size of the potatoes, until thoroughly soft and beginning to ooze. Remove from the heat.

2. Place on a plate or in a dish and allow to cool. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate (they will continue to ooze and sweeten). Serve cold (cut in thick slices and remove the skin) or room temperature, or reheat for 20 to 30 minutes in a 325ºF oven, or in the microwave.

Variation: Baked Sweet Potatoes with Lime

Make the recipe through Step 1. Transfer to a baking dish that will hold the potatoes snugly. Allow to cool completely (they will continue to ooze and sweeten). Slit the potatoes lengthwise and douse with the juice of 1 to 2 limes, to taste. Cover and refrigerate overnight. Serve at room temperature or reheat for 20 to 30 minutes in a 325ºF oven or in the microwave.

Yield: Serves 4

Advance preparation: Baked sweet potatoes will hold in the refrigerator for about 5 days.

The whole hog

Oct 30th 2008From The Economist print edition

JOHN BARLOW, a British expatriate in Galicia, the rain-swept region of the Spanish north-west that gave birth to Franco, has an odd ambition: to eat every bit of a pig, from its tail to its snout. The ambition persists despite marriage to the long-suffering Susana, perhaps the only Galician vegetarian, despite the menace of cholesterol from all those fat-laden pork sausages and despite the threat (kindly pointed out by Susana) that eating pig brain will lead to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

What follows is a quixotic quest for the recipes that give good countryfolk—and doubtless Mr Barlow—ample waistlines and cheerful characters. The cocido (pork stew) from the politically conservative town of Lalín is nothing short of heroic in its mix of ingredients; there are kind words for Doña Aurora’s trotter stew; and an enthusiasm for blood sausages whatever the gruesome process of making them.

All this may be great fun for foodies, but the attraction of Mr Barlow’s book is that he goes well beyond the business of eating. He gives us a fascinating journal of his Galician wanderings, from village carnivals in the pouring rain to a hippy commune in the back of beyond via the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. What comes through is a deep affection not just for Galicia’s pigs—Mr Barlow singles out the long-backed Galician Celtic, hips swaying like Jayne Mansfield’s, for special mention—but also for Galicia’s people and culture.

No answer is ever a straightforward yes or no. No bureaucratic process is ever simple. No bit of history is without its compelling trivia (how many others would know, for example, that in Santiago de Compostela’s 12th-century church of Santa María Salomé there is a statue of an angel wearing glasses?). Mr Barlow pokes his nose in everywhere, and almost without exception people are kind and hospitable.

He meets all sorts, from Fidel Castro’s favourite cousin to Mañuel Fraga, minister under Franco, co-author of Spain’s democratic constitution and still Galicia’s political godfather. The charm is that Mr Barlow is so self-deprecating: his interview with Don Mañuel is a classic encounter between clueless journalist and superior, but patient, politician; his account of teaching phonetics at La Coruña’s university will make many a teacher blush with self-recognition; his Yorkshireman’s contempt for the posh British expatriate with barely a word of Spanish will amuse anyone with a knowledge of Britain’s class system.

None of this yet puts Mr Barlow in the Eric Newby category of travel writer, but he comes close enough in this, his third book. As for Susana and baby Nico, they are sometimes there, and sometimes not. But Susana, it seems, never complains, even though Mr Barlow’s ambition is clearly to indoctrinate Nico into the pleasures of pork.

A widely cultivated South American plant (Lycopersicon esculentum) having edible, fleshy, usually red fruit.

The fruit of this plant.

Slang. A woman regarded as attractive.

[Alteration of Spanish tomate, from Nahuatl tomatl.]

tomatoeyto·ma'to·ey (-tō-ē) adj.

WORD HISTORY Among the greatest contributions to world civilization made by the early inhabitants of the Americas are plant foods such as the potato and squash.

The tomato, whose name comes ultimately from the Nahuatl language spoken by the Aztecs and other groups in Mexico and Central America, was another important contribution. When the Spanish conquered this area, they brought the tomato back to Spain and, borrowing the Nahuatl word tomatl for it, named it tomate, a form shared in French, Portuguese, and early Modern English.

Tomate, first recorded in 1604, gave way to tomato, a form created in English either because it was assumed to be Spanish or under the influence of the word potato. As is well known, people at first resisted eating this New World food because its membership in the nightshade family made it seem potentially poisonous, but it is now is an important element of many world cuisines.

[tuh-MAY-toh; tuh-MAH-toh] Like the potato and eggplant, the tomato is a member of the nightshade family. It's the fruit of a vine native to South America. By the time European explorers arrived in the New World, the tomato had made its way up into Central America and Mexico. The Spanish carried plants back home from Mexico, but it took some time for tomatoes to be accepted in Spain because it was thought that-like various other members of the nightshade family-they were poisonous. Some tomato advocates, however, claimed the fruit had aphrodisiac powers and, in fact, the French called them pommes d'amour, "love apples." It wasn't until the 1900s that the tomato gained some measure of popularity in the United States. Today this fruit is one of America's favorite "vegetables," a classification the government gave the tomato for trade purposes in 1893. Dozens of tomato varieties are available today-ranging widely in size, shape and color. Among the most commonly marketed is the beefsteak tomato, which is delicious both raw and cooked. It's large, bright red and slightly elliptical in shape.

Globe tomatoes are medium-size, firm and juicy. Like the beefsteak, they're good both raw and cooked. Another variety is the plum tomato (also called Italian plum and Roma), a flavorful egg-shaped tomato that comes in red and yellow versions. Grape tomatoes are baby romas. The medium-size green tomato has a piquant flavor, which makes it excellent for frying, broiling and adding to relishes.

The small cherry tomato is about 1 inch in diameter and can be red or yellow-gold in color. It's very popular-both for eating and as a garnish-because of its bright color and excellent flavor. The yellow cherry tomato is slightly less acidic than the red and therefore somewhat blander in flavor. Though it's long been popular raw in salads, the cherry tomato is gaining favor as a cooked side dish, quickly sautéed with herbs.

The Return of a Lost Jersey Tomato

Jessica Kourkounis for The New York Times

GETTING REDDER John Ebert holds a Ramapo tomato; he has three acres of them on his Cherry Hill, N.J., farm.

“Everyone was going gaga over them. My farmers were trying to grow them, and we’d walk out in the field and just see horticultural garbage,” said Mr. Rabin, a longtime agricultural extension agent with Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. who works with about 800 growers around the state. “Every time it rained, they would crack open or turn into water bags. They burned in the sun or developed fungus you could taste,” he said. “It was painful to watch, and the yields were a nightmare.”

Since 2001, Mr. Rabin has been the head of the Rutgers tomato project, responsible for identifying tomatoes that farmers can grow successfully and consistently. It is an awesome charge in a state where “Jersey tomato” is as prideful a phrase as “Jersey girl.” It is even more so this year, as Mr. Rabin helps to bring back to market a lost variety that was once virtually the definition of the Jersey tomato.

But what’s so special about the Jersey tomato?

“It can’t be the soil, because we’ve got sandy soil in the south of the state, and more clay and loam in the north,” said Pete Nitzsche, a Rutgers agent in Morris County. “What we’ve got here is a memory of how tomatoes used to taste.”

That memory is so powerful that when the seeds of a favorite tomato, the Ramapo, became unavailable in the late 1980s, the state’s gardeners began a letter-writing campaign, demanding that Rutgers bring it back.

“The 1990s is when we began to hear a swelling of dissatisfaction with the flavor of tomatoes in New Jersey,” Mr. Rabin said. “Something had to give.”

The Ramapo was popular when it was released by Rutgers in 1968, but was eventually judged too soft for shipping, Mr. Rabin said. This spring, after a multiyear project that involved retrieving fragile seeds from a retired plant geneticist and sending them to Israel for germination, Rutgers finally brought back the Ramapo.

John Ebert, whose family runs the last working farm in Cherry Hill, N.J., has three acres of Ramapos just turning red this week.

“Ramapo was literally the only tomato we grew for most of my childhood,” he said. “It was, and maybe still is, the perfect Jersey tomato.”

The classic Jersey tomato is not an heirloom, loosely defined as a tomato your great-grandfather might have grown in the backyard. Classic Jerseys are hybrid tomatoes, bred by seed companies or in laboratories like Mr. Rabin’s, to have certain qualities such as resistance to disease or high yields. The famous Rutgers hybrid tomato, released by the university in 1934, has a particular sweet tanginess that was prized by the Campbell Soup company, based in Camden, N.J.

An heirloom can be any type of tomato, such as a plum, a cherry or a beefsteak. Since their breeding is uncontrolled, heirlooms tend to have intriguing genetic variations like green streaks, blushing blossom ends and mahogany shoulders.

“The Jersey tomato is a nondescript red, round tomato,” said Mr. Rabin. “And I use nondescript as a term of respect.”

Is there nothing unique about the legendary Jersey tomato? Ask seven New Jersey farmers and you get the same answer: a perfect balance of sweet and acid. But everything from lemonade to lollipops can be described that way.

Although many praise the Ramapo’s tangy, mouth-filling flavor, growers especially appreciated its vigor. Unlike some heirlooms, this hybrid variety was prolific and easy to grow. Linda Muccio, a retired teacher who grew up near Paterson, said that her Italian-born grandparents — all four of them — used home-grown Ramapos all summer and for sauce in September when she was a child, choosing them over Italian plum tomatoes because the yields were so much greater. “More tomatoes on the vine means more sauce for the winter,” she said. “Simple as that.”

New Jersey tomatoes and homegrown varieties have been considered safe for weeks.

“I have two large Ramapos ripening in a pot on my patio,” said Sandra McLaughlin, who participates in the state’s Master Gardener program in Monmouth County, and has never tasted a Ramapo. “I can’t wait to see what all the fuss is about.”

Such excitement about a round red tomato is now rare. American cooks and gardeners have embraced striped Green Zebras, maroon Brandywines and Russian Blacks. In some circles, the plain old red, round, medium-size beefsteak is now branded with the dreaded phrase “supermarket tomato.”

Except, that is, in New Jersey, where the state’s agricultural reputation was built on consistently sweet, juicy tomatoes that were ingested by the nearby Campbell and Heinz plants and transformed into soup, ketchup and juice, generating vast fortunes and mighty brands in the process.

“The Ramapo is the heirloom tomato of New Jersey,” said Mr. Nitzsche.

Many factors, from rainfall to genetics, contribute to a tomato’s flavor. But perhaps the most important is ripeness, an advantage that Jersey tomatoes had whenever they were eaten in or near New Jersey.

“Someone will probably have my head for saying this,” said Gary Ibsen, an organic tomato farmer in central California. “But to my mind, what the Jersey tomato has going for it is the legend, and the loyalty, and the rest of it is just the pronounced flavor of any tomato that’s picked ripe and not shipped around the continent.”

Flavor versus function has been a fundamental choice for American farmers, since the Interstate highway system was established in the 1950s.

“Once tomatoes were being bred for shipment, everything changed,” Mr. Ibsen said. Farmers benefited most by selecting varieties with thick skins and tough walls. “But now that shipping is so expensive, I think everything is going to change again,” he predicted. “You’re going to see a lot more local tomatoes everywhere.”

Is spending $10,000 to send a truckload of Jersey tomatoes from California to New Jersey like sending coals to Newcastle? On his 300-acre organic farm, Mr. Ibsen grows both heirlooms and hybrids, including the Rutgers.

“The hybrids that were developed for taste, not for shipping, can hold up to any heirloom out there,” Mr. Rabin said.

“When I hear these young chefs gushing about heirlooms, I wonder: haven’t they ever tasted a Big Boy, or an Early Girl?”

Tops for Taste

Since 2001, the Rutgers Agricultural Extension Service has invited the public to evaluate about 150 tomato varieties. (Details and information on Ramapo tomatoes are at njfarmfresh.rutgers.edu/JerseyTomato.html.) Following are the highest rated.

2008年9月21日 星期日

Why Chinese Food Isn't Hip

Why did I wander out to Long Island on a steamy day, traveling some 14 miles from the center of the American restaurant scene to a dumpy place at the end of a New York City subway line? It seemed crazy to go all that way to visit Golden Szechuan. That is, until I plunged my chopsticks into a dish of ma po dou fu, that tongue-numbing classic of China's famed regional cuisine.

I hadn't tasted anything like it in this country since the late 1970s -- the bland white chunks of tofu set off by unashamed amounts of brown Sichuan peppercorns, red-bean paste and chiles, along with a scattering of ground beef and Chinese leek.

But why did I have to make a pilgrimage to the center of Chinese immigration here in the Flushing neighborhood of New York's Queens? Why couldn't this authentic example of China's unchallenged place at the pinnacle of world cuisines, an eminence shared only by France, have been available in a grander setting in Manhattan? Why, in a period when fusion cooking has mainstreamed Japanese and even minor Asian cuisines like Korean, has Chinese food been largely ignored by young U.S. chefs hungry for new grist for their food-transforming imaginations?

Anyone worried about the rise of China on the world stage, as made clear by last month's lavish Olympics display, can take a kind of cold comfort from the almost total failure of the world's biggest culture to break into the foodie world. Yes, there are tens of thousands of places to buy second-rate pork buns and wontons in any town you might happen to be in, from Lima, Peru, to Lima, Ohio. There are also deeply rooted Chinese expat cuisines in Malaysia and the Philippines. And even these peripheral adaptations of Mother China's food can be found in modern restaurants in Manhattan outside Chinatown.

But tell me where I can find a quality, high-end Chinese restaurant anywhere in a U.S. urban center aimed at nonethnic diners and I will beat a path there. So would other gastronomes indoctrinated into the mysteries of tongue-burning Sichuan and elegant Beijing dishes during the golden era of authentic Chinese food in America, which followed Richard Nixon home from his historic visit to Mao Zedong in 1972. We remember when the arrival of a chef from the mainland to a midtown Manhattan location was headline news. Now when we want to recapture the excitement and taste of those times, we trek to Flushing, or to Rosemead outside Los Angeles.

There are a few exceptions to the decline of Chinese food in U.S. urban centers. In New York, Wu Liang Ye in the shade of Rockefeller Center and Shun Lee West near Manhattan's Lincoln Center continue to wave the flag of Sichuan. We read recently about a reputedly excellent new place in the city's Garment District, but on closer inspection, Szechuan Gourmet turned out to be a sloppy, indifferent rendition of the great, hearty food of the earthquake-plagued province, whose dishes Fuchsia Dunlop gathered there as a student chef for her book 'Land of Plenty' (2003).

The ma po dou fu at Szechuan Gourmet was muddy in flavor, beef-starved, with barely a shred of green. We are also eager to try Yujean Kang's in Pasadena, Calif., and Sang Kee Peking Duck House in Philadelphia. And we'll be glad as always to hear from readers about their own picks.

Perhaps we can blame the poor quality of virtually all Chinese restaurants outside Chinese enclaves on their patrons -- descendants of the same non-Chinese who enabled self-taught immigrant Chinese chefs to invent chop suey. But that was generations ago.

Today, a greater cross-cultural shame is the paucity of Chinese fusion dishes on the same menus that ambitious, home-grown chefs fill with Japanese and other non-Chinese Asian hybrids. Think of Manhattan's Nobu and the Sushi Samba chain, with their South American takes on sushi. Recall all the eclectic menus that don't bother to explain the Japanese ingredients ponzu, nori and uni. Or, if you eat at one of the three hip Manhattan spots of Korean-American chef David Chang, ask yourself why his splashy fusion dishes can feature Korean kimchee and the Thai hot sauce sriracha without more than a nod to the master food culture that underlies Mr. Chang's melting wok?

Maybe the reason is that Chinese cuisine is just too massive an edifice for a superchef to assault. No less a kitchen titan than Jean-Georges Vongerichten closed his idiosyncratic and widely panned 66, a pseudo-Chinese place in Manhattan's Tribeca, and handed it over to a Japanese team. Or is it that investors in glitzy restaurants think their clientele will dismiss real Chinese food as uncool?

We recently tried the Peking duck at New York's only elegant midtown Chinese restaurant, Tse Yang, an offshoot of a similar place in Paris that puts a display of wine bottles and smoked salmon on the home page of its Web site. We'd call Tse Yang's Peking duck, that great procession of crisp duck skin and duck parts, an inept homage. Like its Sichuan dishes it's neither authentic nor a fusion of edible worlds, Gallic or otherwise. Michael Chow's international Mr. Chow chain, meantime, smothers a basically Beijing menu with cosmopolitan settings and service.

In downtown Manhattan, we love to order a true French-Chinese fusion dish at Annisa, where the Chinese-American chef Anita Lo has long featured Shanghai soup dumplings empowered with foie gras. But her diverse menu is no more weighted to China than to the rest of Asia, France and her own imagination.

In California, Wolfgang Puck has been trying his hand at Chinese fusion with Chinois on Main in Santa Monica since 1983. On its surface, this ought to be what I'm seeking -- a Chinese restaurant with a name partly French, and located outside Chinatown by its Austrian creator. In fact, only about half the entrees on a current Chinois menu look to China for their inspiration. And I am including in my tally some marginal items. Ditto at Boston's much-admired fusion outpost Blue Ginger, where China plays a distant second fiddle to Japan and southeast Asia.

To improve on this, at least superficially, you have to head for the hills, the L.A. suburb of Agoura Hills, where Mandarin Express Chinese Fusion Restaurant has been playing with tofu in 36 varieties since 1988 -- from strawberry-peach to Cajun style. It also offers a vast array of 'mock' meat dishes evidently based on Chinese Buddhist vegetarian recipes. Some of Mandarin Express's entrees are for carnivores, but I don't have high hopes for many of chef-owner Dan Chang's 'signature creations': orange chicken/beef named after actor Kelsey Grammer and raspberry Captain Morgan rum chicken.

Still, I will definitely be reserving a table at Mandarin Express -- to see if there is a serious confrontation with Chinese tradition behind the fruit and flimflam -- on my way to China, where, Ms. Dunlop reports, Chinese food is evolving in new directions of its own, while pioneering European restaurants are offering possibly unintentional versions of Euro-fusion to Chinese diners.

Until then, I will be commuting to Flushing, for dan dan noodles at Spicy & Tasty or the hot pot favored by hip young Chinese diners at Golden Szechuan.